(CBS DETROIT) – The suspect in the murder trial of Samantha Woll, the Jewish leader who murdered outside her home last year, the witness statement was entered into.
Michael Jackson-Bolanos is charged in connection with the stabbing death of Woll, the president of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, outside her home in the Lafayette Park neighborhood on Oct. 21, 2023.
Woll attended a wedding the night before the stabbing and returned home sometime after midnight.
Investigators found no signs of forced entry in Woll’s home and believe she was stabbed inside her residence before walking to the front of her house, where she was later found.
Woll’s ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey Herbstmaninitially confessed to killing her during a 911 call in the weeks following her death, but later retracted the statement, claiming he was suffering from delusions as a result of increasing doses of antidepressants and smoking cannabis.
Herbstman was released from police custody in November 2023 after detectives were unable to place him at the scene of Woll’s murder.
Jackson-Bolanos was arrested in January and the trial began on Tuesday, June 11.
On Wednesday, Jackson-Bolanos testified in his defense that he checked cars downtown to make sure they were unlocked. If a car was unlocked, he searched the vehicles.
He testified that he found a bag on Lafayette that contained Chapstick and some gloves, which he put on because he was touching doorknobs. He said on Jefferson that he took a bag from a car at the River Place Apartment. He said there was candy in the bag, but that he dropped the bag when he heard people approaching.
Surveillance footage of Jackson-Bolanos was played, showing him running away from the area when he heard the people. The video showed him hiding, which he testified he did to avoid being caught breaking into the vehicles.
He walked back in the direction he came from and stopped when he realized the people were still getting into a vehicle. When asked why he dropped the bag, Jackson-Bolanos said he wanted to avoid any interaction with the people he saw.
Jackson-Bolanos was then seen grabbing the plastic bag with the assorted Halloween candy inside. Video footage shows him walking with the bag and abruptly turning around, which he testified was caused by hearing tires screeching.
After eating some of the candy, he was caught on camera trying to scale the wall of a parking garage to see if he could get to the cars parked there. He testified that he didn’t take anything from any of the cars.
When he got to the parking garage, he saw security guards patrolling, so he ran away.
According to his own statement, Jackson-Bolanos stopped running and looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was following him.
Jackson-Bolanos testified that he saw someone in black walking in the same area as him. That person walked through the parking lot, and Jackson-Bolanos was seen walking through the same parking lot after that person.
The suspect went back to Lafayette, where he left the backpack because he wanted to go back and get it and look at the other cars. He testified that if a car is locked, he goes to the next vehicle.
Jackson-Bolanos said he saw a white security car, so he ran into the parking lot to wait for it to leave the area. When the security left, Jackson-Bolanos checked more cars.
He then went back to retrieve the bag, but said he then saw a dark figure. He said the figure looked like it was “in hiding.” When the figure didn’t move, Jackson-Bolanos moved toward it. Eventually, he could see it was a person lying on the ground when he got close enough.
He continued to approach and said he touched the person’s neck to see if he was okay. Jackson-Bolanos also said he put his hand in front of the person’s face, but did not shake the body. He could tell the person was female, based on the amount of hair, but said he could not determine their race.
“When I realized I just touched a dead person, I grabbed the bag and left,” Jackson-Bolanos said.
When asked if he called police, Jackson-Bolanos said, “My first reaction was to grab my phone, but I had to think carefully about where I was and what I was doing at that moment,” referring to the way he got into cars.
He then said he was heading toward Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood. He walked right past people on strike in a well-lit area, and when asked about his decision, he said he did so because he didn’t want to break into vehicles and “wanted to be around people who were still alive.”
Jackson-Bolanos said that while he was walking, he shone the light on his hand and saw that there was blood on his hand, which made him panic because he had just killed a dead person.
He testified that he did not stab Woll, did not take anything from her, and never tried to enter her home. He said he had been following the case before his arrest because he had come into contact with Woll and wanted to know what had happened to her. Jackson-Bolanos testified that when he encountered Woll, he did not know how she had died.
